D.L., I am so sorry you are suffering so much! I know the anguish of OCD thought loops and how complicated it can be to tease out OCD from my own thoughts/desires. It is simply not fair that OCD would latch on to the parts of our identity we love/value most.
Thanks for linking to my Substack and I would also encourage anyone who relates to these thoughts to learn more about OCD and treatment options. I am here to attest that it is possible to treat OCD without losing the core of who you are/what you love. In recovery I’ve become more truly myself, more freely able to choose to do good, and more connected to my values than ever before.
Hoping you may find the same!
I’ll be on the lookout for more resources for OCD and autism to share.
I'm definitely going to have to subscribe to your substack, so I'm glad DL shared it and you've commented. Lately I've been trying to examine my anxiety spirals and figure out if they're OCD/OCD-related, and more and more I think the answer is yes. So more resources sounds good to me!
What you said about it being possible to treat OCD without losing the core of who you are makes me think about my fears around starting antidepressants--I couldn't fathom who I would become if I began treating my depression and anxiety. I was scared it would erase me, the good and the bad, and numb me out. Turns out medication (and recently starting therapy) have helped me better understand myself and truly be myself, to lean into my special interests and relationships more than I ever could've imagined.
And that also makes me think of the Collection's new song "Medication," which has a chorus of "I deserve to be well." I still struggle with that some days, but finding treatments and working thru my struggles has been so life-giving that I really try to remember that I deserve to be well.
Hi Ellis! I can relate to the fear of losing yourself in healing. Who am I if not anxious, striving, overthinking?!?! I am so glad to hear medication has been helpful for you! It took me a long time to seek healing because of lack of awareness around OCD and because I didn’t believe I deserved to get better--I thought the panic and anxiety and constant “not good enough” feeling was an appropriate response to my constant failings. Pursuing treatment can feel so risky and irresponsible. I hope you take that chance on yourself!
I’m so, so thankful for your courage in writing this today.
Our family is in the middle of a huge sensory shift (away from isolated mountain living and into a suburb of Dallas), and I’ll just say it’s been ROCKY. (My therapist’s license doesn’t permit her to continue working with me in Texas, which is a huge stabilizing support system that was ripped away. So great, thanks life.)
And I have been stuck in this place where 1. I’m so tired of talk therapy’s answer being “Well just think different thoughts in your brain, autistic lady!” and 2. I’m able to observe my mind being clobbered by a runaway train pretty much all day long. Sometimes I struggle to find the balance between accepting myself as I am (resisting the urge to fix and normalize) and also recognizing, as you so lovingly talk about in this piece, when my quality of life is genuinely being crippled. I felt a lot of myself in your descriptions and it’s helping me feel less alone.
I’ve long wondered if/how OCD might be at play in my own life, and I guess I felt so exhausted by the idea of another label, another thing, because at this point it can just feel like another target on my back. But I think it’s time to roll up my sleeves and find a doctor who can step into the cacophony of mental health crap that is the legacy of Dr. James Dobson, et al.
Thank you, D.L. Sending so much love from my heart to yours (and your very large-hearted 13 year old).
Both my kids have the tenderest hearts. By thinking about how much safety and care and joy they deserve I can start to believe that for myself as well. I TOTALLY identify with not wanting there to be yet another target on my back/another reason for people to write me off. Which is why it has been so hard for me to come to terms with (beyond just writing about it publicly).
It is so so hard being sensitive in a violent world. And staying aware and present rather than dissociate might even be harder.
After getting an AuDHD diagnosis this summer, I have been getting curiois with how my ADHD shows up, because I was totally taken aback. The psychiatrist was emphatic that it was what they called an overfocused type of ADHD, meaning, I struggle to filter out input that animates my ruminating mind (usually provided by my special interest in understanding the historical and sociological roots behind why we are plagued by systems of oppression) and that run a constant second track of thoughts while doing everyday life. When they said that I knew immediately they were describing by another name my experience of ethical ocd which I came to recognize as such thanks to your vulnerability with us D.L.
I don’t care much for the right terminology or labels. I want to learn to live with the nervous system I have and heal from the ways that sensitive nervous system was traumatized by the world of independent network charismatics of my childhood through my twenties. On top of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians bringing up twisted eschatological and Christian Zionist propaganda, all the latest revelations of abuse at IHOP-KC has brought up some deeply repressed memories of my time in YWAM, and especially, the Kona -based community that was a cross-pollination between IHOP-KC and Bethel’s supernatural school of ministry. My ADHD doesn’t want to stop analyzing everything till I craft a coherent story for what happened to me, but my body is begging me to slow down because this shit is taking its toll.
So while I would love to do one more research on this prophet or that apostle or listen to one more person’s story, I might finish off the fifth installment in Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series. Cause that at least brings me joy.
I related to so much of what you shared here, particularly the IHOP KC reference and the need to craft a coherent story. Glad you’ve found Gamache, those books are soul savers for me too. I particularly love the audiobooks, which is saying something bc I’m real particular about what I can listen to.
I also think the big stories and themes emerge over time. Some of the stories of my life are just starting to fit into place and it feels different than it has in the past. It is unfurling, it is complicated, but there are overarching stories that truly do help me process.
"I don’t care much for the right terminology or labels. I want to learn to live with the nervous system I have and heal from the ways that sensitive nervous system was traumatized by the world" exactly this! If you ever want to write a guest post processing the IHOP/YWAM stuff, you know this is the place for it!
I love this community. I’m so nourished by the creative paths of healing shared here week after week. After being steeped, as you said, in the binary of healed/unhealed, in which there is only one healing path (prayer), it is really life giving to read the surprising, creative, utterly unique ways people are charting paths to safety.
I tried art therapy for the first time in my therapy session last week. I was struggling to say anything because my body and brain were telling different stories. My therapist got out pastel chalks and a large sketch pad. I outlined an arm and torso, flooded with yellow light. At the center of my torso was a lush green space inside a black obelisk. The outer layer of my outline was an inch of cold, prickly, blue. It was the prickly, almost painful feeling that hovers just above my skin, and making me jumpy and keeping my breath shallow. It’s the feeling of the world not being safe. And I recognized my brain is hyper focused on the singular project of making that blue energy go away. It was my brains way of charting a path to safety. That project kept me outside my body, or at the periphery, where my body meets the world.
My body was inviting me to a different process. It was inviting me to radically accept the sensation of the prickly blue energy--that my body feels unsafe--and to stay present with the pain. By staying present with I was able to descend deeper into my body, into the spaces flooded with light, then into the lush green inner landscape.
It makes sense to me that your brain and body have different ways of charting a path to safety, creating two very different “flavors” of special interests. My guess is that charting other paths to safety won’t erase your brain’s project, but temper it. Because yes, there is work to do in the world, but if our sense of safety depends entirely on the world’s willingness to change, we lose too much of our human experience.
Anyway, thank you so much for creating this space for us to explore unique paths of healing together.
I love this, it's such a good picture of what can happen in somatic therapy! I love how tuned in you are to your own body and your own experiences. It is so encouraging to me.
Thank you for taking time to describe your experience with the art therapy exercise. I love hearing how people are able to explore what's going in in their bodies because it's also difficult for me to go deeper in that area. Best wishes to you!
I remember when I first heard the term “religious scrupulosity” and the clarity it brought to all the ways that I internalized so many messages from white evangelicalism and was so racked with guilt/shame so constantly. It was one instance where diagnostic language was, if not empowering, then illuminating.
yes, while initially I deal with shame when I identity something as an OCD thought loop, it eventually is extremely helpful for combatting the cycles and getting some relief in my life. I have a LOT of opinions on why moral scrupulosity in particular is never written about as a disorder (and instead we venerate people and their suffering as being "saints")
I feel the same. The term was helpful for me in understanding my experience of spiraling in guilt & shame so often. I do that less now than I did a decade or two ago, but it still pops up sometimes.
*A part of this is due to my personality--I have always been intense, and have always tried to figure out why humans hurt each other and get them to STOP IT*
One of my special interests since childhood is classic mystery novels - My library has almost all the Agatha Christie canon on audiobook (nearly 75 books) and I listen through the entire catalog every 1-2 years.
Also quilting! I was laughing to my husband last night that it's really such a stupid art - let's take essentially two layers of blankets and spend hundreds of hours stitching them together to make....one thicker blanket. Cool story, bro. But I love it, and it lasts for long enough that you can sink into a rhythm.
Nov 8, 2023·edited Nov 8, 2023Liked by D.L. Mayfield
Your kiddo really sounds amazing, observant and kind. I’m so glad you have each other.
Right now, it’s birds for me. I’m taking a lot of joy in birds. I recently got the Merlin app to identify bird calls and it’s like it’s opened up a whole world that was there this whole time. I’m doing my best to learn whose call is whose. These are my neighbors and I want to appreciate them fully. I will also stop conversations to look at, listen to, or follow birds.
This is SO cool. I am slowly trying to pay more attention to birdsong as well, because there are so many studies showing how it is great for nervous systems!
"it is hard to be highly sensitive in a violent world" indeed indeed. thanks for writing this and detailing what's going on with you. it's hard and vulnerable and helpful, like all the best things. also SO glad you're loving Maria's book. i freaked out when she mentioned Dobson too! she is a gem.
sending love and light and hugs and kindnesses your way ♥️
Thank you (as always) for sharing your heart and experiences and research with us. Your comment about leaning in to passion/beauty as an antidote to moral overwhelm really resonates with me. For the past few years, I've been focusing on "cultivating delight" in my life. I like this phrase because it's open to my many special interests, too being surprised along the way, and because delight feels more temporary and achievable than full blown happiness, if that makes sense.
A current special interest maybe some others here will enjoy is an app called A Kinder World. It's a combination of caring for plants, decorating rooms in a house, and tiny mindfulness practices. It's free, it's kid-friendly, and if any of you download it, let me know so we can be friends and I'll send you a plant for your garden!!!
Yes I used to write all the time about Dorothy Day and "the duty of delight"--so this has been a theme for me for a while now. But oh man, I seem to forget it all the time! I have never heard of that app but I am totally down for trying it!
I don't have OCD but I relate deeply to the sense of having to be a good person 100% of the time actively or that means you are a bad person. Appreciate your words here very much, thanks for sharing.
Video games have been really helping me get through these current turmoils not only as a pleasant distraction but as a way to process fears and hopes I have about life.
Baldur’s Gate 3 which is a fantasy game where you can recruit companions to help you on your quest and they all have personal quests/backgrounds that revolve around them leaving controlling people/environments. For instance you have a cleric that was indoctrinated since she was a young girl, a warrior who was raised in a theocratic fascist society, and the son of an aristocrat who made a deal with a devil to save the city his father administrates, and so on. Everyone including yourself is fighting to regain control of their lives in some form or another and (mostly) help the people around them although because it’s an rpg you can make selfish choices that benefit only yourself.
Another game that I got into this past weekend and finished 3 times already is The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood. You play a witch who has been exiled from her coven for 200 years and due to making a deal with a cosmic behemoth makes steps to gain her freedom and re-enter society. You change the direction of the story with your fortune telling and there’s a lot a cool characters and discussions about what it means to live in community, how we handle conflict, and how best to make sure everyone’s needs are met. Surprised me but it’s a new fave.
Solidarity on the ocd stuff though, I’ve recently been coming to terms with the fact that I struggle with hoarding which evidently falls into the ocd family and it’s been overwhelming but also weirdly helpful to put a name to it. Like I’ve already done things I was unable to do for years just because I was able to name my problem for what it is.
Oooooh I'm going to tell my kid about the cosmic wheel game! And maybe Krispin will play Baldur's Gate 3, they both sound incredible. Thanks for sharing!
Cosmic Wheel is SO much fun! I recently played Cult of the Lamb (a silly little game where you start a cult and recruit sheep) and found it so helpful to just laugh at the irony of my past high-control religious self playing a cartoon cult leader.
Nov 7, 2023·edited Nov 7, 2023Liked by D.L. Mayfield
I've heard about Baldur's Gate 3 since it came out bc I'm in a lot of fantasy groups online, but no one ever said that it's heavily themed around leaving controlling environments! I don't play many video games, but omg am I gonna have to check that one out.
ETA: I totally get what you mean about having a name for things helping, even if it doesn't solve the root problems. I recently learned that I dissociate kinda often, and having that framework is really helpful because now I can talk to my partner about why I suddenly freeze up or check out of a conversation, and I can better go, "Ahhh, that's what happened the other day" when I think back on moments that unsettle me. Anyway, I'm glad you've found useful labels and names for what you've been experiencing.
Exactly! Learning about these terms and also how they are patterns that impact a lot of people has been so helpful for me to destigmatize/have less shame when I experience them myself. Dissociation is such a great example of this. For me, I realized a lot of my ethical meltdowns were actually autistic meltdowns!
(My earlier comment was accidentally deleted.) There is so much to unpack in what you wrote. You’ve shared many interesting and helpful ideas, and a lot of things resonate with me. I can’t unpack it all now, so thank you for writing and leaving it here.
Thank you for sharing this with us! I see my youngest kid (32 y/o) so much in what you write about yourself and I plan to share this with them. Your kid is amazing & I’m so glad that they have helped you 😌
Thank you so much for sharing this, and this was what really stuck with me: “What my 13yo was trying to explain to me was that one of the ways autistic people survive being sensitive people in a violent world is by leaning into pleasure when and where we can.”
I have very little concept of what it means to lean into pleasure, or what I enjoy and that it be a priority. So very helpful to consider and ponder.
Also my nine year old is PDA autistic and we are struggling massively re school. If you would ever be up for sharing how you all manage school privately with us, I would be so grateful. Also understand if you cannot/will not, too.
I have thought about writing about PDA and school but it is difficult since it is so personal to my family. But there are so few resources to talk about it, I will think about doing a few posts just for paid subscribers in January/February.
D.L., I am so sorry you are suffering so much! I know the anguish of OCD thought loops and how complicated it can be to tease out OCD from my own thoughts/desires. It is simply not fair that OCD would latch on to the parts of our identity we love/value most.
Thanks for linking to my Substack and I would also encourage anyone who relates to these thoughts to learn more about OCD and treatment options. I am here to attest that it is possible to treat OCD without losing the core of who you are/what you love. In recovery I’ve become more truly myself, more freely able to choose to do good, and more connected to my values than ever before.
Hoping you may find the same!
I’ll be on the lookout for more resources for OCD and autism to share.
I'm definitely going to have to subscribe to your substack, so I'm glad DL shared it and you've commented. Lately I've been trying to examine my anxiety spirals and figure out if they're OCD/OCD-related, and more and more I think the answer is yes. So more resources sounds good to me!
What you said about it being possible to treat OCD without losing the core of who you are makes me think about my fears around starting antidepressants--I couldn't fathom who I would become if I began treating my depression and anxiety. I was scared it would erase me, the good and the bad, and numb me out. Turns out medication (and recently starting therapy) have helped me better understand myself and truly be myself, to lean into my special interests and relationships more than I ever could've imagined.
And that also makes me think of the Collection's new song "Medication," which has a chorus of "I deserve to be well." I still struggle with that some days, but finding treatments and working thru my struggles has been so life-giving that I really try to remember that I deserve to be well.
Hi Ellis! I can relate to the fear of losing yourself in healing. Who am I if not anxious, striving, overthinking?!?! I am so glad to hear medication has been helpful for you! It took me a long time to seek healing because of lack of awareness around OCD and because I didn’t believe I deserved to get better--I thought the panic and anxiety and constant “not good enough” feeling was an appropriate response to my constant failings. Pursuing treatment can feel so risky and irresponsible. I hope you take that chance on yourself!
I’m so, so thankful for your courage in writing this today.
Our family is in the middle of a huge sensory shift (away from isolated mountain living and into a suburb of Dallas), and I’ll just say it’s been ROCKY. (My therapist’s license doesn’t permit her to continue working with me in Texas, which is a huge stabilizing support system that was ripped away. So great, thanks life.)
And I have been stuck in this place where 1. I’m so tired of talk therapy’s answer being “Well just think different thoughts in your brain, autistic lady!” and 2. I’m able to observe my mind being clobbered by a runaway train pretty much all day long. Sometimes I struggle to find the balance between accepting myself as I am (resisting the urge to fix and normalize) and also recognizing, as you so lovingly talk about in this piece, when my quality of life is genuinely being crippled. I felt a lot of myself in your descriptions and it’s helping me feel less alone.
I’ve long wondered if/how OCD might be at play in my own life, and I guess I felt so exhausted by the idea of another label, another thing, because at this point it can just feel like another target on my back. But I think it’s time to roll up my sleeves and find a doctor who can step into the cacophony of mental health crap that is the legacy of Dr. James Dobson, et al.
Thank you, D.L. Sending so much love from my heart to yours (and your very large-hearted 13 year old).
Both my kids have the tenderest hearts. By thinking about how much safety and care and joy they deserve I can start to believe that for myself as well. I TOTALLY identify with not wanting there to be yet another target on my back/another reason for people to write me off. Which is why it has been so hard for me to come to terms with (beyond just writing about it publicly).
It is so so hard being sensitive in a violent world. And staying aware and present rather than dissociate might even be harder.
After getting an AuDHD diagnosis this summer, I have been getting curiois with how my ADHD shows up, because I was totally taken aback. The psychiatrist was emphatic that it was what they called an overfocused type of ADHD, meaning, I struggle to filter out input that animates my ruminating mind (usually provided by my special interest in understanding the historical and sociological roots behind why we are plagued by systems of oppression) and that run a constant second track of thoughts while doing everyday life. When they said that I knew immediately they were describing by another name my experience of ethical ocd which I came to recognize as such thanks to your vulnerability with us D.L.
I don’t care much for the right terminology or labels. I want to learn to live with the nervous system I have and heal from the ways that sensitive nervous system was traumatized by the world of independent network charismatics of my childhood through my twenties. On top of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians bringing up twisted eschatological and Christian Zionist propaganda, all the latest revelations of abuse at IHOP-KC has brought up some deeply repressed memories of my time in YWAM, and especially, the Kona -based community that was a cross-pollination between IHOP-KC and Bethel’s supernatural school of ministry. My ADHD doesn’t want to stop analyzing everything till I craft a coherent story for what happened to me, but my body is begging me to slow down because this shit is taking its toll.
So while I would love to do one more research on this prophet or that apostle or listen to one more person’s story, I might finish off the fifth installment in Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series. Cause that at least brings me joy.
I related to so much of what you shared here, particularly the IHOP KC reference and the need to craft a coherent story. Glad you’ve found Gamache, those books are soul savers for me too. I particularly love the audiobooks, which is saying something bc I’m real particular about what I can listen to.
I also think the big stories and themes emerge over time. Some of the stories of my life are just starting to fit into place and it feels different than it has in the past. It is unfurling, it is complicated, but there are overarching stories that truly do help me process.
"I don’t care much for the right terminology or labels. I want to learn to live with the nervous system I have and heal from the ways that sensitive nervous system was traumatized by the world" exactly this! If you ever want to write a guest post processing the IHOP/YWAM stuff, you know this is the place for it!
I love this community. I’m so nourished by the creative paths of healing shared here week after week. After being steeped, as you said, in the binary of healed/unhealed, in which there is only one healing path (prayer), it is really life giving to read the surprising, creative, utterly unique ways people are charting paths to safety.
I tried art therapy for the first time in my therapy session last week. I was struggling to say anything because my body and brain were telling different stories. My therapist got out pastel chalks and a large sketch pad. I outlined an arm and torso, flooded with yellow light. At the center of my torso was a lush green space inside a black obelisk. The outer layer of my outline was an inch of cold, prickly, blue. It was the prickly, almost painful feeling that hovers just above my skin, and making me jumpy and keeping my breath shallow. It’s the feeling of the world not being safe. And I recognized my brain is hyper focused on the singular project of making that blue energy go away. It was my brains way of charting a path to safety. That project kept me outside my body, or at the periphery, where my body meets the world.
My body was inviting me to a different process. It was inviting me to radically accept the sensation of the prickly blue energy--that my body feels unsafe--and to stay present with the pain. By staying present with I was able to descend deeper into my body, into the spaces flooded with light, then into the lush green inner landscape.
It makes sense to me that your brain and body have different ways of charting a path to safety, creating two very different “flavors” of special interests. My guess is that charting other paths to safety won’t erase your brain’s project, but temper it. Because yes, there is work to do in the world, but if our sense of safety depends entirely on the world’s willingness to change, we lose too much of our human experience.
Anyway, thank you so much for creating this space for us to explore unique paths of healing together.
I love this, it's such a good picture of what can happen in somatic therapy! I love how tuned in you are to your own body and your own experiences. It is so encouraging to me.
Thank you for taking time to describe your experience with the art therapy exercise. I love hearing how people are able to explore what's going in in their bodies because it's also difficult for me to go deeper in that area. Best wishes to you!
I remember when I first heard the term “religious scrupulosity” and the clarity it brought to all the ways that I internalized so many messages from white evangelicalism and was so racked with guilt/shame so constantly. It was one instance where diagnostic language was, if not empowering, then illuminating.
yes, while initially I deal with shame when I identity something as an OCD thought loop, it eventually is extremely helpful for combatting the cycles and getting some relief in my life. I have a LOT of opinions on why moral scrupulosity in particular is never written about as a disorder (and instead we venerate people and their suffering as being "saints")
I feel the same. The term was helpful for me in understanding my experience of spiraling in guilt & shame so often. I do that less now than I did a decade or two ago, but it still pops up sometimes.
Then *at least* illuminating
*A part of this is due to my personality--I have always been intense, and have always tried to figure out why humans hurt each other and get them to STOP IT*
yeah same, it's exhausting.
like, everyone. just STOP IT.
One of my special interests since childhood is classic mystery novels - My library has almost all the Agatha Christie canon on audiobook (nearly 75 books) and I listen through the entire catalog every 1-2 years.
Also quilting! I was laughing to my husband last night that it's really such a stupid art - let's take essentially two layers of blankets and spend hundreds of hours stitching them together to make....one thicker blanket. Cool story, bro. But I love it, and it lasts for long enough that you can sink into a rhythm.
Cool Story Bro but for quilts has me cackling. This is what middle age looks like and you know what? I don't hate it!
Your kiddo really sounds amazing, observant and kind. I’m so glad you have each other.
Right now, it’s birds for me. I’m taking a lot of joy in birds. I recently got the Merlin app to identify bird calls and it’s like it’s opened up a whole world that was there this whole time. I’m doing my best to learn whose call is whose. These are my neighbors and I want to appreciate them fully. I will also stop conversations to look at, listen to, or follow birds.
I support this 🩷 bird joy is a bottomless well!
This is SO cool. I am slowly trying to pay more attention to birdsong as well, because there are so many studies showing how it is great for nervous systems!
"it is hard to be highly sensitive in a violent world" indeed indeed. thanks for writing this and detailing what's going on with you. it's hard and vulnerable and helpful, like all the best things. also SO glad you're loving Maria's book. i freaked out when she mentioned Dobson too! she is a gem.
sending love and light and hugs and kindnesses your way ♥️
Thank you (as always) for sharing your heart and experiences and research with us. Your comment about leaning in to passion/beauty as an antidote to moral overwhelm really resonates with me. For the past few years, I've been focusing on "cultivating delight" in my life. I like this phrase because it's open to my many special interests, too being surprised along the way, and because delight feels more temporary and achievable than full blown happiness, if that makes sense.
A current special interest maybe some others here will enjoy is an app called A Kinder World. It's a combination of caring for plants, decorating rooms in a house, and tiny mindfulness practices. It's free, it's kid-friendly, and if any of you download it, let me know so we can be friends and I'll send you a plant for your garden!!!
Yes I used to write all the time about Dorothy Day and "the duty of delight"--so this has been a theme for me for a while now. But oh man, I seem to forget it all the time! I have never heard of that app but I am totally down for trying it!
I forgot she uses that! If you check out Kinder World, I think my "friend code" is AAVTK4, and my name is just "Bee."
I don't have OCD but I relate deeply to the sense of having to be a good person 100% of the time actively or that means you are a bad person. Appreciate your words here very much, thanks for sharing.
For a fun romance rec with an autistic leading lady, I ADORE the heart principle by Helen Hoang
Video games have been really helping me get through these current turmoils not only as a pleasant distraction but as a way to process fears and hopes I have about life.
Baldur’s Gate 3 which is a fantasy game where you can recruit companions to help you on your quest and they all have personal quests/backgrounds that revolve around them leaving controlling people/environments. For instance you have a cleric that was indoctrinated since she was a young girl, a warrior who was raised in a theocratic fascist society, and the son of an aristocrat who made a deal with a devil to save the city his father administrates, and so on. Everyone including yourself is fighting to regain control of their lives in some form or another and (mostly) help the people around them although because it’s an rpg you can make selfish choices that benefit only yourself.
Another game that I got into this past weekend and finished 3 times already is The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood. You play a witch who has been exiled from her coven for 200 years and due to making a deal with a cosmic behemoth makes steps to gain her freedom and re-enter society. You change the direction of the story with your fortune telling and there’s a lot a cool characters and discussions about what it means to live in community, how we handle conflict, and how best to make sure everyone’s needs are met. Surprised me but it’s a new fave.
Solidarity on the ocd stuff though, I’ve recently been coming to terms with the fact that I struggle with hoarding which evidently falls into the ocd family and it’s been overwhelming but also weirdly helpful to put a name to it. Like I’ve already done things I was unable to do for years just because I was able to name my problem for what it is.
Oooooh I'm going to tell my kid about the cosmic wheel game! And maybe Krispin will play Baldur's Gate 3, they both sound incredible. Thanks for sharing!
Cool beans, you’re welcome!
Cosmic Wheel is SO much fun! I recently played Cult of the Lamb (a silly little game where you start a cult and recruit sheep) and found it so helpful to just laugh at the irony of my past high-control religious self playing a cartoon cult leader.
I've heard about Baldur's Gate 3 since it came out bc I'm in a lot of fantasy groups online, but no one ever said that it's heavily themed around leaving controlling environments! I don't play many video games, but omg am I gonna have to check that one out.
ETA: I totally get what you mean about having a name for things helping, even if it doesn't solve the root problems. I recently learned that I dissociate kinda often, and having that framework is really helpful because now I can talk to my partner about why I suddenly freeze up or check out of a conversation, and I can better go, "Ahhh, that's what happened the other day" when I think back on moments that unsettle me. Anyway, I'm glad you've found useful labels and names for what you've been experiencing.
Exactly! Learning about these terms and also how they are patterns that impact a lot of people has been so helpful for me to destigmatize/have less shame when I experience them myself. Dissociation is such a great example of this. For me, I realized a lot of my ethical meltdowns were actually autistic meltdowns!
Big mood! Frameworks are so helpful that way.
(My earlier comment was accidentally deleted.) There is so much to unpack in what you wrote. You’ve shared many interesting and helpful ideas, and a lot of things resonate with me. I can’t unpack it all now, so thank you for writing and leaving it here.
Thank you for sharing this with us! I see my youngest kid (32 y/o) so much in what you write about yourself and I plan to share this with them. Your kid is amazing & I’m so glad that they have helped you 😌
Thank you so much for sharing this, and this was what really stuck with me: “What my 13yo was trying to explain to me was that one of the ways autistic people survive being sensitive people in a violent world is by leaning into pleasure when and where we can.”
I have very little concept of what it means to lean into pleasure, or what I enjoy and that it be a priority. So very helpful to consider and ponder.
Also my nine year old is PDA autistic and we are struggling massively re school. If you would ever be up for sharing how you all manage school privately with us, I would be so grateful. Also understand if you cannot/will not, too.
I have thought about writing about PDA and school but it is difficult since it is so personal to my family. But there are so few resources to talk about it, I will think about doing a few posts just for paid subscribers in January/February.